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Pricegrabber is your friend. Search for "Actiontec dual modem" and you'll find it in several places, the cheapest at Provantage.

And at around USD$55, is a lot cheaper than the alternative.

I've installed a few of these for clients who were unable to get broadband, were unwilling to pay more for broadband versus cheap dialup, or were in need of a backup link. Yes, sharing a 56K connection in an office network is hideously slow. It's bad enough sharing a dialup connection with my wife, a bookkeeper, when she needs to update Quicbooks' tax tables. "To hell with your clients, dear, I need to read Slashdot!"

I'll believe it when I see it on the peg at Wal*Mart.

Wonder which we'll see on the shelves first: this thing or Serial ATA? Which, by the way, has been on backorder for the last 6 months or so.

If anything deserves an award in the "Promises, promises" category (excepting Duke Nukem Whenever; that's earned several), it's Serial ATA.

Has anyone out there actually got their hands on a Serial ATA drive, PURCHASED from a retail source? I mean, several online shops LIST them, but nobody seems to actually HAVE them.

I take that back. In researching for this post, I actually DID find a place that lists them in stock. Let's hope they are telling the truth! Also, let's hope their order system can survive a slashdotting, since they seem to be the only place in the world that has them. I'm sure they'll be backordered by tomorrow.

The Memorex RF6000:
found it here, here and here
The KB and mouse both share the same receiver, and together they cost as much as the logitech mouse. I haven't bought one yet, but I did try one out at my local CompUSA and was very impressed. The charger is pretty cool too, you just roll the mouse right up into it like parking a car....

The KB also has a bunch of nice programmable internet and mulitmedia buttons. I'd say this thing blows the logitech away both with features and price (now I just need to save up so I can get one)

I noticed no one has mentioned Provantage.com. Their prices may not be rock bottom on everything, but they seem to have a HUGE selection (it's interesting that they have real time inventory numbers, and large ones at that). It looks bigger than newegg's, from a cursory 5 minute comparison. I have shopped from provantage many times, and with a warehouse on the East Coast, they get things to me within 2 days every time, usually less. Shipping is very reasonable as well. I would definitely recommend this site for buying many parts at once.

A couple of other people suggested tcwo.com, and I tend to agree. After an extensive research done about a week ago, I came up with the following result for my needs. By the way, they don't charge for shipping or tax, so what you see is what you get. on their web site. In the end, when you factor shipping and fax into the equation, tcwo.com beats newegg.com on nearly every single price.

• CPU: Intel P4 2.26 533MHz FSB $279.00
• Case: Antec Perf. Plus1080 430W Beige $146.00
• MOBO: Asus P4B533E i845e DDR S/R/L/U2 (NIC integrated, FireWire integrated) $205.00
• HDD: Maxtor 80GB U133 7200 2MB version $117.00
• RAM: 512MB PC2700 333MHz $116.00
• Monitor: Hansol 19IN/18V 1600X1200 96KHZ 25MM 920D OSD MPRII DYNAFLAT $289.68. provantage.com
• GPU: Visiontek XTASY GeForce4 TI4600 AGP 128MB DDR (VIVO) $392.00
• Sound: Creative Labs Audigy X-Gamer 5.1 $89.00
• DVD: Samsung 16X DVD Retail $59.00
• CDRW: TDK VEloCD 40X/12X/48X EDIDE $133.95. compuplus.com
• Input Logitech Cordless Optical Mse/KB $79.00
• floppy: Beige 1.44 FDD $14.00
• Voice/Fax/Modem : USR v.90 56k voice/fax winmodem $24.00
• FireWire : integrated with MOBO
• NIC : integrated with MOBO

A couple of other people suggested tcwo.com, and I tend to agree. After an extensive research done about a week ago, I came up with the following result for my needs. By the way, they don't charge for shipping or tax, so what you see is what you get. on their web site. In the end, when you factor shipping and fax into the equation, tcwo.com beats newegg.com on nearly every single price.

• CPU: Intel P4 2.26 533MHz FSB $279.00
• Case: Antec Perf. Plus1080 430W Beige $146.00
• MOBO: Asus P4B533E i845e DDR S/R/L/U2 (NIC integrated, FireWire integrated) $205.00
• HDD: Maxtor 80GB U133 7200 2MB version $117.00
• RAM: 512MB PC2700 333MHz $116.00
• Monitor: Hansol 19IN/18V 1600X1200 96KHZ 25MM 920D OSD MPRII DYNAFLAT $289.68. provantage.com
• GPU: Visiontek XTASY GeForce4 TI4600 AGP 128MB DDR (VIVO) $392.00
• Sound: Creative Labs Audigy X-Gamer 5.1 $89.00
• DVD: Samsung 16X DVD Retail $59.00
• CDRW: TDK VEloCD 40X/12X/48X EDIDE $133.95. compuplus.com
• Input Logitech Cordless Optical Mse/KB $79.00
• floppy: Beige 1.44 FDD $14.00
• Voice/Fax/Modem : USR v.90 56k voice/fax winmodem $24.00
• FireWire : integrated with MOBO
• NIC : integrated with MOBO

What in the name of Ubizmo are you talking about? No OS, other than an enterprise-level UNIX, has ever cost $300.

Windows 2000 Professional is going for $271.88 at the first reseller I looked up.

That's close enough to $300.00 that the other guy is basically right.

We set up a small wireless network (5 hosts) at our apartment building to share internet. One of our biggest concerns was interference from other devices. On our limited budget we didn't have the luxury of buying signal testing equipment and AP's to see if 802.11b would be reliable in our building. So in the end, we went with HomeRF 2.0 equipment made by Proxim which has a better range and is much better at avoiding interference than 802.11b and transmits at a similar 10Mbps.

We bought the USB adaptors (for around $80) from Provantage for less than any USB 802.11b adaptors we could find at the time.

There are some limitations with HomeRF, (I don't think roaming between AP's is supported and only drivers for Windows and Mac are provided) but in our situation it was just what we needed and it's worked flawlessly. We've had no network downtime due to interference.

Speaking of high resolution monitors, check out this new IBM monitor: http://www.provantage.com/YIBML011.HTM. It's a 22" monster with a resolution of 3840 x 2400!!! That's over 200dpi. At $8k, it's a bargain =)

as stated here, usb to ethernet adapters are well supported by linux. buy 'em here

You might have to write a little code to make it work, but it should be relatively simple writes to the /dev/ttySx device.

The beauty of using the cappucino would allow me to do this but using double-stick tape and tacking it all on the back side of my door and run wires out through the peephole to the outside of the door where I mount the LCD.
3 little boxes (cappucino, usb hub, LCD serial interface) stuck to the door, and a few cables, with the power and cat5 cords coming down from above, with enough slack to allow the door to open...

Seems like a reasonable project, and would allow me to program the display over the network from my main server.

Voila! A personal electronic bulletin board!
And the idle cpu cycles on the cappucino could be used for something more interesting, say SETI or distributed.net processing...

"I challenge someone here to rough up some specs for a US$140,000 general purpose PC rig, running whatever OS is appropriate for its purpose."

Alright, I'm bored, I've got some time to kill...let's see how close I can get.

[A couple hours pass]

Alright, I suppose I could keep adding things onto this, but I won't. I got it up to $10,103.46, though. It's a multimedia workstation designed for graphics and digital video editing, high-performance gaming, DVD playback, and DVD authoring, with all the accessories.

• Case: PC 60 Aluminum w/3 Case Fans and Window Kit, $229.99
• Power supply: Antec PP403X 400W Power Supply $84.10
• Motherboard: ASUS CUV4X-DLS w/SCSI $333.62
• Processors: 2 x Intel Coppermine PIII 933mhz $398.00 ($199.00 ea)
• Processor fans (x2): Antec Heavy Duty CPU Fan $33.54 (16.77 ea)
• RAM: 256mb Kingston PC133 DIMM $156.64
• IDE cable (x2): Rounded $25.98 ($12.99 ea)
• Floppy drive: Compaq LS-120 internal IDE $127.99
• DVD/CD-RW Drive: HP CD-Writer 9900ci 12x10x32x DVD 8x $349.99
• DVD Decoder: Creative Labs Dxr3 $79.99
• CD Drive: Creative Labs CD-ROM Blaster 52x $49.99
• DVD-RAM Drive: Panasonic LF-D201U SCSI-2 $649.00
• SCSI Cable (x3): Rounded $38.97 ($12.99 ea)
• SCSI Hard drive (x2): Seagate Cheetah73 73GB U160 $1576.00 ($788.00 ea)
• RAID Controller: Asus PCI-DA2100 SCSI RAID $609.00
• IEEE 1394 Card: Belkin F5U501 PCI $79.95
• Video: VisionTek GeForce3 64mb AGP $389.99
• Monitor: Samsung 18" Syncmaster TFT LCD $1891.00
• Sound: Creative Labs SBLive X-Gamer $99.99
• Speakers: Creative Labs/Cambridge SoundWorks DTT3500 Dolby 5.1 Digital $299.99
• Printer: Epson Stylus 2000P Inkjet Printer $869.99
• Scanner: HP ScanJet 6300Cxi 1200dpi $387.36
• Mouse: Razer Boomslang 2000 $82.99
• Mouse Pad: 3m Precise Mousing Service $8.49
• Keyboard: IBM Preferred 104-key Black $59.00
• Joystick: Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback 2 $109.00
• Steering Wheel: Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Wheel USB $159.00
• Game Pad: Gravis Eliminator GamePad Pro $26.99
• UPS: APC Smart-UPS 1000 XL $577.92
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional $319.00

That's right, Win2K. I know we all love linux in here, Win2K is actually a decent OS, especially for all of the tasks I've specced this out for.

--

You say that the cases you have found have proprietary motherboards with no AGP. Could the Radeon All-In-Wonder PCI be any help? ATI's site doesn't mention it yet (although I've read comments from people who claim to have one), but these guys are selling it.